1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819938303321

Autore

Kabir Ananya Jahanara <1970->

Titolo

Paradise, death, and doomsday in Anglo-Saxon literature / / Ananya Jahanara Kabir

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge ; ; New York, : Cambridge University Press, 2001

ISBN

1-107-12390-9

0-521-03060-9

0-511-32885-0

0-511-15566-2

0-511-48333-3

0-511-04406-2

0-511-11969-0

1-280-15489-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 210 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England ; ; 32

Disciplina

829.09/38236

Soggetti

English literature - Old English, ca. 450-1100 - History and criticism

Paradise in literature

Christianity and literature - England - History - To 1500

Christian literature, English (Old) - History and criticism

Judgment Day in literature

Anglo-Saxons - Religion

Death in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-202) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preface -- List of abbreviations -- 1. Between Eden and Jerusalem, death and Doomsday : locating the interim paradise -- 2. Assertions and denials : paradise and the interim, from the Visio Sancti Pauli to Ælfric -- 3. Old hierarchies in new guise : vernacular reinterpretations of the interim paradise -- 4. Description and compromise : Bede, Boniface and the interim paradise -- 5. Private hopes, public claims? paradisus and sinus Abrahae in prayer and liturgy -- 6. Doctrinal work, descriptive play : the interim paradise and Old English poetry -- 7. From a heavenly to an earthly interim paradise : toward a tripartite



otherworld -- Select bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.